Fieldtrip Report:
Diamond Hill Quartz Mine,
Antreville, S.C.,
March 5th and 6th, 2005Official fieldtrip:
Mountain Area Gem and Mineral Association______________________
Well another great collecting weekend has come and gone and here I am, sitting here writing this report to record our excellent time together. This was the largest M.A.G.M.A. fieldtrip yet, we had close to 50 members show up for the two day trip to Diamond Hill. Many new members attended as well as several members who have been in the club for over a year, but live so far away they had not been on any previous trips, one of those members was Frank Caldarazzo from Orlando Florida, it was great to finally meet him on a fieldtrip. There are 58 pictures in this report, so I have broken it into several pages, I hope you enjoy it. I had arrived on Friday and had set up my base camp for the weekend. I'm glad I went to bed early Friday night, the first digger arrived at 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning!
Me and Frank at Basecamp Saturday morning.
It didn't take long for the sun to come up and warm things up, John D. and I were in a hole by 7:30 a.m.
Soon, many more members were arriving for the days activities, some were there for the day and some had come to spend the weekend. Our member Lee took lots of pics which helped me out alot, it gave me more time to rockhunt.
Lee and Rich.
(Of course I did take time to get a pic of Lee)
Below are a few pics of some of the specimens that Lee collected.
White quartz
Skeletal quartz
Large skeletal crystals with manganese coating.
White skeletal cluster.
Many of the members went back to the dump hill where we had found a lot of amethyst on our previous trip, I spent a little time there myself and found some small pieces and small crystals.
Misc. amethyst crystals found in the dump piles.
Double terminated amethyst twin with coating, I am soaking this piece to remove the coating and will post a finished pic later.